Urban Explorer

Talking tech this week – Nick brought Ableton’s Push pad-based controller to create and perform music, with loads of instruments & effects, so hoping to develop somethings specific for the arts centre with this technology – discussed documentation and social media to capture participant experiences to be edited into a single short film – will establish a Facebook page to hold content and mediate work prior to the event – It’s hard to establish way of communicating in between meetings – some people use facebook some don’t, some use mobile phones some don’t, some use email some don’t… I guess thats why people have meetings.

Small group today – focussing on translating ideas into words so that we can communicate with people who we hope will translate those words back into their own creative ideas – bit of a loop going on there.

Week 8 and we had another walk through. The sun was shining this morning and there was nowhere better to be than at the top of the Rock looking out over the town across to the Uillinn Arts Centre and the surrounding hinterland. The area is so large we gave names to particular places to help identify them to ourselves when working out our plans. Doctors Hill, Telecom Lane and Windmill Lane are access points. Well Lane, Fire Pit, Famine Memorial, Roundabout, Skeety Rock Lane are the physical features of the 4.5 acre site. Pictured above is our newly appointed HQ. Exciting times ahead in 2016.

Week 7 was important for us. We decided that we can continue to work together as a group after the research phase is complete. The experience of having spent 6 weeks meeting in different sites, discussing diverse artistic practices and processes gives us a shared field of reference and a language for discussing our artistic ambitions. Next week we will try and pin down those ambitions more specifically – a process that will be both iterative and generative. This week we met in the enclosed space of Uillinn. Next week we are back on the Rock – in the expanded field that I love.

Getting gritty today. We went to see an exhibition by Suzy Cremers and the sets for her interactive performance Underworld. Afterwards we had a very ‘disciplined’ discussion using Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process. It was a real pleasure to focus on the work of one member of the group. An intriguing, challenging, eye opening and brave day for all of us I think.

This morning we visited the Masons hall in Skibbereen which has been recently completely restored. The ornate and detailed decoration of the Lodge holds its history and current practice; the tools of masonry carry moral instruction ‘I will strive to love and care upon the level and by the square” on a brass square dating back to 1597; and astronomical information used to indicate time of day and time of year by rod and plumb-line. Dermod O’Brien made us welcome in Lodge no 15 and gave us a fascinating history of Masonry as well as playing the cutest little pedal-organ. They describe themselves, not as a secret society, but a society with secrets ..

Artist Toma McCullim introduced the work of George Nuku a Maori artist who sculpts with polystyrene & plexiglass, making objects from Maori traditional culture. These objects become more than their physical dimensions through ritualistic practices that reconfigure them as sacred. Toma had met Nuku and described weaving flax skirts to accompanying storytelling as a ritual in preparation for entry to the meeting house and to an embodied belonging. An awful lot to take in this morning and not enough time to really discuss throughly.. so more to come.

Finished off the Create performance resource today at Uillinn and reviewed some of the audio recordings made at the Rock during the Summer. Then went to see a plaque I had never noticed before on Bridge St. It commemorates the Clerke sisters who are described as astronomers, scientists and writers, an unusual occupation for their gender and times as they were born just before the famine in 1840 & 42. It was so easy being in the arts centre compared to the other places we have visited – a venue designed for purpose and with a great staff putting resources at our disposal.